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Comment: Liam Clarke: Lessons of the Troubles can steer us through Iraq mess

The day the marines walked into Baghdad last year seems almost as remote as the deployment of the first British troops on the streets of Northern Ireland in 1969.

A defining image was a middle-aged Iraqi man, scrawny, gap-toothed and overcome by joy, holding up two thumbs to the camera and shouting: “Mr Bush, okay. Okay Mr Bush.”

The coverage then swung to Midwestern farm boys, grinning as they popped heads out of tanks to wave to the folks back home and talk about their mission of liberation.

The only discordant note was a cranky looking group of British “human shields” who pursued the smiling Americans shouting “Yankee go home”, “You are going to die here”, and worse. Nobody paid them any attention. The immediate task was toppling Saddam Hussein’s statue which seemed more resistant to the popular will than his old regime.